Clearly I have neglected this blog yet again, since the twins are almost 8 months old. And because of that fact, I’m doing something I’ve never had to do yet – combine stats posts. Oops. Oh well, at least I’m finally getting them written here.
Life is very busy these days. I often think back to when I started this blog after Della was born – I would sit at my desk at work and post daily, sometimes multiple times a day. Ha! Hahahahaha! If only I had that kind of time now. I mean, no, I don’t wish I was back sitting at a desk all day again, definitely not. But now I get to actually sit down for any length of time longer than 5 minutes without that time being spent folding laundry so infrequently, my poor updates are few and far between. I mean well, really I do. I constantly have a running list in my head of post ideas and kids’ pages notes that I need to write. But I only have so many hours in a day, and I do need to sleep. At least try to sleep with these two little maniacs in our room, anyway.
So anyway… I’ll give you their 6 month well check stats, then a quick update on what they’re up to now (since who cares what they were actually doing at 6 months, oh, so long ago), and a bunch of pictures as usual.
Nat
- Height: 27″ (67%)
- Weight: 17 lbs. (40%)
- Head: 43.2 cm (45%)
- BMI: 16.4 kg/m2 (25%)
Avit
- Height: 26.5″ (44%)
- Weight: 17 lbs. (40%)
- Head: 43.6 cm (58%)
- BMI: 17 kg/m2 (40%)
We can already see that these two have distinctly different personalities. Avit is pushing himself up to sitting (and has been for a couple weeks now); can move himself around a room through a combination of rocking/rolling/sitting/repeating (everything but crawling so far); loves to grab anything in sight and mess with it or try to eat it, including Nat’s head or arm or buns, my leg (yes, the other day i was standing on their blanket in the living room and Avit grabbed my leg, wrapped his arms around it, and started licking it!), and all their toys; and generally not nap when I’d like him to. And just 2 days ago he pulled himself up on the edge of the coffee table to standing! Good lord. Nat is much more content to just lie in his spot on the floor, play with his toys, roll over here and there but nothing crazy (no ending up on the opposite side of the room or in the corner facing the wall under the jumperoo like Avit), and take his naps like good little babies should. Sometimes they actually get on opposite nap schedules – Nat takes a decent morning nap; Avit does not. Then after lunch I put Avit down and Nat wakes up for the afternoon. Turds.
I just consistently started solids last week. I tried them a while ago, and neither one had much interest at all, surprisingly. Avit loved his first taste of oatmeal and wanted to grab the spoon and do it all himself. But then when I tried other things like sweet potatoes, he would barely take a bite. Nat got his start at solids later than Avit because I was giving them at dinner time to begin with, and Nat was always taking his 3rd nap then (yes, 3rd nap of the day). So he missed out for a while, but once I gave him his first bite of sweet potatoes, he loved them and actually did a lot better at eating than Avit. Now that we’re into the school routine again, I’ve begun trying to give them their solids at lunch time instead, since dinner time always gets so hectic. Some days it works out that way, some days it doesn’t, but they seem to be doing fine with them at either time of the day.
They both have their bottom front 2 teeth and got those about a month ago. And they instantly started biting me with them while nursing, so that’s super fun. Fortunately I only nurse them once overnight and sometimes once around wake-up time now with bottles of pumped milk and formula throughout the day, but that still hurts when it happens!
Speaking of bottles, they’re still on the same bottle schedule that they’ve been on for months – 4 bottles per day (roughly 9:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m.) that are each a mixture of mostly pumped milk and a little formula. Nat just recently caught up to Avit with having a 6 oz. bottle each time; he had been stuck at 4 oz. for the longest time while Avit chugged down 6 and basically as much as you would give him. Chunk.
Like I said earlier, naps aren’t always the most consistent. Nat can usually be counted on to take 2 solid naps a day if we’re not walking to/from school (I’ve stopped putting him down for that last early evening nap and just stretching things out until bedtime instead), and Avit is happy to take normally just a longer afternoon one. For the past couple days, though, the stars have aligned and I actually have gotten all 3 boys to nap at the same time after lunch for a couple hours, and I haven’t even been giving the twins their solid food. They’ve had colds the past couple days and are all stuffy, so I’m not forcing them to try to swallow mushy food along with all their snot. If they could do that regularly, I’d be happy for them to drop morning and early evening naps all together.
Bedtime is pretty much right after that last bottle, so they’re usually in bed by 6-6:30. No, they are still not sleeping through the night, so everyone can stop asking. They have both done it, sleeping until 5:00 or even 6:00 the next morning, but neither does it with any consistency at all yet. Their schedules are fairly regular with the wake-ups, though – one (usually Nat) wakes around let’s say 1:00 and 5:00; the other might wake up then, too, but lately it’s been in the middle of the other two wake-ups instead, somewhere in the 3:00 hour. So there’s a decent chunk of sleep for the first part of the night, then those early morning hours can get dicey. Nat likes to throw in a crying jag in the 10:00-11:00 hour every couple nights, so that’s real fun, because I know he certainly doesn’t need to be eating then but usually the only way to get him back to sleep is to make him a little bottle. So we’ll see. Hopefully they figure it out soon. Morrison didn’t sleep through consistently until between 8-9 months, so I’m not really that surprised that these 2 aren’t either. And now with school mornings again I get up at 5:30, so I just try to go to bed as early as I can since I know I’ll be up a number of times before my alarm even goes off.
They do make up for my lack of sleep during the days with their smiles and general happy attitudes. Lately Avit has started doing a ton of talking, with “da-da-da” and “ga-ga” sounds and even mimicking Ryan the other night when he was saying hi. Nat does more of a “singing,” with high-pitched little squeals and shrieks like Lana used to do, plus a ton of raspberries blowing and motorboat noises. It’s pretty hysterical. And they both get huge chuckling belly laughs going, which is just amazing. When I pick Nat up, he loves to grab the sides of my neck, pull in real close to my face, and act like he’s going to eat my nose. I love it!
They both still love the jumperoos, being held and played with (obviously), their show on Netflix called Little Baby Bum (i don’t know what it is, but this show has total baby mind control. they can both be screaming crabby, and i’ll put them on the living room floor and turn that show on and they instantly quiet), pacifiers and snuggling into their muslin blankets to sleep, being in the stroller and car, reaching for and grabbing toys now, and watching and interacting with all of us. The big 3 love playing with these little guys, too. I just switched out all their 6 month clothes and brought up everything 6-9, 6-12, and 9 month sizes, and I swear those are all going to be too small soon as well. They’re in size 3 daytime diapers and I just bought the first pack of size 4 overnights. I’m hoping that trying overnight diapers now will help get them through the nights better, too. Yeah, we’ll see.
So, that was more than a quick update, but life is pretty great with these little guys. Like Della said in her note to me last summer when I was so upset when we found out we were having twins, it’s going to be fun! It is a shit ton of work, and every day has to be a very controlled level of chaos or else it can get overwhelming, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job. Plus the big 3 really are excellent helpers, which is a lifesaver. It still sounds so weird to me to hear myself say we have 5 children. I think it always will!
Now for the monthly comparisons. I don’t think I had started writing here when Della was 6 months old, but I’ll give you Lana’s and Morrison’s 6 and 7 month posts:
Lana 6 months; Morrison 6 months; Lana 7 months; Morrison 7 months
And here are all the pictures – Della, Lana, Morrison, then the twins. Whew! Let’s see if I can get their 8 month post written before they turn 16.
